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Search Words, Couplet, Verse, Shair In Iqbal Poetry

That true solidarity consists in adopting a fixed communal objective, and that the objective of the Muhammadan community is the preservation and propagation of Unitarianism

And now I will impart to thee the tongue
Of all things that have being; in this speech
The letters and articulated sounds
Are life’s activities. When life is bound
In firm attachment to an aim professed
The opening verse rises spontaneously;
And if that purpose serves us for a goad,
Swift as the tempest gallopeth our steed.
The goal avowed is the true mystery
Of life’s cntinuance, that focuses
The restless flow of its mercurial powers.
When life is conscious of a purposed aim,
All means material yield to its control;
It makes its self the follower of that goal,
For its sole sake collects, selects, rejects.
The helmsman shoreward bound resolves to sail
The flooding main; the destination far
Determines the selection of the paths.
The moth’s heart bears the brand of the delight
Of burning, for which joy it flutters still
About the candle. If the madman Qais
Was wanderer in the wilderness, his aim
Was the high litter wherein Layla rode.
Now be our Layla but familiar
With cities, never shall we lift our tread
To span the desert. In the enterprise
The purpose lies as hidden as the soul
Within the body, and from this alone
Each labour takes its quality and size.
The blood that circulateth in our veins
The nimbler moveth, having the desire
To reach a goal; life’s self consumes itself
In that bright flame, aglow with tulip‐fire.
The Goal is as a plectrum, that awakes
The hidden music in the instrument
Of high ambition, an attractive point
Whereunto moves all centripetal force;
This stirs a people’s hands and feet to move
In vital unison, one vision clear
Bestowing on a hundred several sights.
Be the mad lover of the loveliness
Of noble purpose; flutter like a moth
About this ardent lamp. Sweet was the air
Qum’s music‐maker sang, the silken strings
Sweeping responsive to his pulsing thought:
“While yet the traveller bends to pluck the thorn
That pricks his foot, the litter vanishes.”
If thou art heedless but for one brief breath,
A hundred leagues thou strayest from thy stage.
This ancient creature, that men call the world,
Out of the mingling of the elements
Derived its body; a hundred reed‐beds sowed
That one lament might burgeon; bathed in blood
A hundred meads, to yield one tulip‐bloom.
Many the shapes it fetched and cast and broke
To grave upon Life’s tablet thy design;
Many laments it sowed in the soul’s tilth
Till sprang the music of one call to prayer
Awhile it battled sternly with the free,
And had much traffic with false lords, at last
To strew the seed of faith in the heart’s soil
And on the tongue to cry There is one God.
No other god but God – this is the point
On which the world concentrically turns,
This the conclusion of the world’s affairs.
From this the sphere derives its strength to wheel,
The sun its constancy and brilliance,
The sea her gems, created of its glow,
That set the ocean’s billows quivering.
This is the breeze that fans the earth to bloom,
This rapturous glow a few poor feathers flames
Into the nightingale; and this same fire
Runs like a torch along the vineyard’s veins
And glitters crimson in the dusty bowl.
In Being’s instrument its melodies
Life hidden; O musician, Being’s lute
Seeketh for thee; within thy body flow
A hundred songs, as freely in thy veins
The lifeblood pulses; rise, and smite the strings!
Allahu Akbar! This the secret holds
Of thy existence; wherefore let it be
Thy purpose to preserve and propagate
No other god. If thou a Muslim art,
Till all the world proclaims the Name of God
Thou canst not rest one moment. Knowest thou not
The verse in Holy Scripture, calling thee
To be a people just, God’s witnesses?
Thou art the glow and glory of the days,
And made to testify to all mankind;
To all who comprehend the weight of words
Make general proclamation, and impart
The learned gospel of God’s Messenger.
Unlettered was He, innocent of guile
The words he uttered, that elucidate
The mystery He did not go astray.
Yet, when he held the pulse of living things,
The secrets of Life’s constitution he
Forthwith revealed, and cleansed of ancient blight
The garment of the tulips of this mead.
Life here below is bound up with his Faith
Nor can survive, save guarded by his Law.
Having his Book beneath thy arm, stride out
With greater boldness to the battlefield
Of works; for human thought, idolatrous
And idol‐fashioning, is all the time
In quest of some new image; in these days
It follows once again old Azar’s trade,
And man creates an ever novel god
Whose joy is shedding blood, whose hallowed name
Is Colour, Fatherland, Blood‐Brotherhood.
Humanity is slaughtered like a sheep
Before this worthless idol. Thou, whose lips
Have touched the sacred bowl of Abraham,
Whose blood is ardent with his holy wine,
Against this falsehood, garmented as truth,
Lift now the blade there is not aught but God
And smite! The days are shrouded all in mirk;
Display thy light, and let the thing in thee
Perfected shine o’er all humanity.
I tremble for thy shame, when on the Day
Of Reckoning that Glory of all time
Shall question thee: “Thou tookest from my lips
The word of Truth, and wherefore hast thou failed
To pass my message on to other men?”